


Blind Date Universe

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Mulder and Scully are accidentally set up on a blind date by mutual acquaintances who don't know that they are partners.





	1. Tingle

She grabs her briefcase and heads to the door, bidding him goodnight in as normal a voice as she can muster. He’s suddenly beside her, hand on the small of her back, escorting her into the dark basement floor maze. It’s late. Later than she intended to leave and she strides out.

“In a hurry, Scully?”

She opens her mouth to respond but he’s wearing that grin again, the one that makes her tingle. She’s never been sure if the firing in her synapses is because he exasperates her or because he excites her. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. She’s never met a man who displays so many childlike tendencies and yet manages to be empathetic, intellectually demanding and incredibly charming.

“Got a date?” She ignores him but he presses on. “Someone going to bust down those walls and find out who the real Dana Scully is?” He’s seriously grating on her now. That tone, bordering on intrusive but with a touch of amusement. He’s digging for gossip. She finds her car keys.

“Cos I have,” he says, smiling as her car bleeps open. “Got a date. A blind date,” he says, drawing out the words like gum. “Wish me luck. I hear she’s a firecracker so I might have third degree burns by the morning.”

In her mind, she’s thinking, if that firecracker finds out who the real Fox Mulder is, she better run a mile. Instead she says, “I’m sure you can handle her.”

She doesn’t know what to wear. She bought new jeans on the weekend and a body, high necked crimson velvet. But it feels all wrong when she tries the outfit on, like there’s too much of her, it adds a layer, something tactile, like she’s more than she is. She removes it and it lays on her bed, still in the shape of her. She buttons up the dusky pink silk blouse and tucks it into her jeans, threading her black patent leather belt through the holds. She slips on black heeled pumps, smoothes her hands over her ass as she looks over her shoulder into the mirror. Her hair is up, but tendrils fall around her face. She dabs perfume at her pulse points and sighs.

How did she get herself into this mess? A new job was one thing, but a new boyfriend too? Tash at Bean, the corner coffee shop, was hardly a friend, so what had possessed her to agree to this date? Her stomach sinks. She untucks the blouse. Is loose better? Or does that say something else? She’s not sure she’s ready to make a statement about anything, let alone who Dana Scully is.

She wonders how Mulder’s feeling. Or perhaps she should be more concerned about how Mulder’s date is feeling. Firecracker. What sort of pejorative, sexist insult is that? As she hails a cab she hopes Miss Firecracker blows a rocket up his arrogant ass.

Her date is late and she’s squirming in her seat, nursing a nerve-emboldening gin and tonic and wishing she led a life that leant itself to small talk. What was your week like, Dana? Oh, I got run off the road by men in black and rescued my dumbass partner from a secret military base where he got his memories sucked out of his nose. How about you? She laughs to herself and shakes her head. She’s going to lay into Tash tomorrow. Seriously, this is a disaster. If Mulder ever finds out about this, he’ll laugh at her until next year.

There’s a familiar smell under nostrils before she can register what’s happening. “Isn’t it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded? Who did you tick off to get this blind date, Scully?” He kisses her cheek and it burns under his lips. He sits opposite her and grins. It makes her tingle. “How was your week?”


	2. Shiver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder's POV.

It’s pretty easy to spot Dana Scully. Unless she’s in a crowd. And even then, after just two cases together, he knows that her height is not an accurate measure of her spirit. She’s sitting with her back to the door and her hair is up. It’s one of his things. Not quite a kink. But a woman’s neck is…it makes him shiver.

He’s been on edge all day, buzzing with anticipation of this date. Tash made it sound so simple. There’s a woman who buys a cream cheese bagel and a mid-strength black coffee every other day. She’s nothing like his usual type but Tash is convinced there’s something about her that sets her apart. A quiet strength. An incisive brain. A sense of justice.

“You got all that from her breakfast order?” Mulder said.

Tash slammed the cash drawer shut. “No. I’ve heard her on the phone talking to someone I presume is her partner. Sounds like a dick, but she handles him.”

When Scully blushes it’s something to behold. She tries so hard not to give an inch with her body language, her words are always measured, but her skin betrays her every time and she isn’t used to his brand of charm just yet. He knows he butters the bread too thickly sometimes but it’s a defence mechanism. All the time he’s dishing it out, he doesn’t have to open himself up to take it. And so far, it’s worked. The search for answers is the only quest his heart is taking.

“How was your week?” he asks and she snuffs out a gentle laugh that eases the tension.

“There’s a guy I work with. He’s got a curious outlook, he’s intelligent. But he’s a bit rash.”

“Rash?” he asks. “What do you do with him, this guy?”

The waiter interrupts and she orders a chardonnay. He goes for a European lager. She’s trying to look at the menu but he can see her reading more than the words. How will she play this? How bold does Dana Scully get?

“Well, firstly, it’s a new partnership so we’re still doing the get-to-know-you dance.”

His fingers drum the table top and her gaze flicks between his rapping and his mouth. Interesting. “And secondly?”

There’s a pause, she draws a deep breath. The skin on her chest is still pink and she’s fiddling with the small gold cross she habitually wears. “Secondly,” she starts, looking at him directly now. Pretty bold, Scully. “Secondly, he thinks I’m a spy.”

“How did you give him that impression? There must some smoke with that fire.” Probing has always been his strong suit. Prodding, poking, stoking the flames. He can’t help himself.

The waiter serves their drinks and it gives her time to recover. “This guy, he draws a pretty long bow sometimes. Leaps of logic that defy common sense. I’m a scientist though. I bring with me the perspective of the rational, I write reports that outline the facts. I’m not a spy.”

When she finishes, she takes a long sip of her wine. There’s a slight tremble in her grip. He watches her, unsettling her. Or trying. Waiting for an uncomfortable beat before answering. “Sounds like you’ve got him pegged. I can’t imagine this partnership lasting though.”

“Why’s that?” Her voice is querulous, wavering. She swallows hard, blush darkening.

“It seems to me that this guy is the type who won’t want his actions being questioned all the time. That he might just want a partner who backs him up, who shares his faith, who wants the same thing as he does.”

She takes another sip. Her throat stretches as she sits up higher and he feels that familiar spark in his system. He can’t help but watch her Adam’s apple bob. She really does have a beautiful neck. She surprises him when she leans forward on her elbows and he’s compelled to meet her halfway, faces just inches apart. Their knuckles brush and he shivers.

“But that’s the thing,” she says, confiding in him. She licks her lips and he casts his eyes down the narrow slit of her blouse. The shadowy space that holds secrets he would gladly jump into find out about. Rashly. He’s losing his focus and it’s not until she speaks again that he recovers some composure.

“She does. She really does share his faith and she really does want the same thing as he does. But there is a difference. She demands the evidence.”

“Whereas he relies on gut instinct and the truth?”

“That’s about the long and the short of it,” she says, still face-to-face with him.

“The yin and the yang.”

“The black and the white,” she responds, clasping her hands, looking a little smug.

“Opposites attract?”

She sits up, smiling now. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“And yet, there’s chemistry that can never be explained.” He swigs his lager and waits for her to jump. It doesn’t take her long.

“I think that conflating a field of science with an expression of speech is a very long bow to draw.”

“You make me sound like this partner of yours. And according to Tash he’s a dick. Do you share this view or do you have another, more rational descriptor, Dr Scully?”

She giggles now and turns her head to the window. The length of her neck is on show and he suppresses the urge to run his fingers over the skin there, trace the fine bones of her shoulders and wonder about the curves and planes and crests of her.

“Do you want to know how Tash described you?” she says eventually. He nods, but he’s not feeling quite as bold as before. There’s a seriousness about her expression now. She’s tucked her chin in and she’s taken her bottom lip in her teeth. “She told me you were single-minded, empathetic and compassionate. But that you were a bit…” There’s a brief pause and he knows what she’s going to say.

“Spooky?”

Scully laughs, a pealing-bells tinkle that he’s not sure he’s heard before and but he knows with absolute certainty that he wants to hear again. “No,” she says, regaining some composure, “lost.”

He sinks back, running his finger around the top of his beer glass. Lost. “So that begs the question, Scully. Do you think you can help me find my way home?”

Her wine glass is empty, just a lipstick stain in the rim and pink spots on her cheeks. She smiles. “I don’t think you’re lost Mulder. I think you just like to walk down every path to see where they might lead.”

That’s pretty good, Scully. “And you’re happy to follow?”

She leans her chin on her hands and giggles. “No.”

The lager bubbles in his throat and he tries not to cough it out. If she’s quitting before they’ve got started, maybe he can enjoy going against the bureau guidelines of consorting with female partners. No strings. No danger of feelings getting in the way of his work. He’s going to suggest they change their plans and head back to the pizza place near his apartment block but she beats him to it.

“I’m not a follower, Mulder. But I’m happy to walk by your side.”

He shivers. And it’s nothing to do with her neck. This fucking woman. She’s something else. “Care to walk by my side to this pizza joint I know?”

She laughs out loud. “That is the worst pick up line I’ve ever heard, Mulder.”

“Makes me sound like that dick partner of yours?”

She pushes out her chair and nods. “Tash is a pretty good judge of character.”

He lets that one go. “What’s your favourite pizza topping, Scully?”

“I like it hot and spicy,” she says and he follows her out of the door, watching the tendrils of hair wisp around her neck on the breeze.


	3. Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully's POV.

She’s already regretting the shoes. She’s used to striding out to keep up with Mulder but she usually doesn’t do it in spike heels. Both her little toes are bunched up, rubbing with each step and she can practically hear the blisters open up on her toes. The line for pizza is out the door.

“Conventional wisdom,” he says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, “suggests we phone through an order.” He flips out his phone. “Do we have the energy requirements to walk a little further?” He looks at her feet and grins, big and flashy.

“Can you point that thing away from me,” she retorts, and he laughs out loud.

“Pretty good, Scully.”

They walk on and her feet complain with every step. When he stops, she can’t hide her sigh of relief. 

“This must be the place.”

His apartment is not what she expected. She’s imagined corners of Celebrity Skin poking out from under his couch, uneven piles of adult videos, framed UFO prints on the walls and kitchen cupboards full of junk food. And there are X-rated movies laddered next to his tv but there’s Jaws and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Wicker Man and a decent amount of other classics too, and when she catches a glimpse of the stack of microwave mac cheeses above the stove, she swallows her smugness remembering her own last grocery shop.

As he orders, she looks at the prints on the walls, art deco, classic movie posters, he has a fish tank and it’s quite beautiful, green light rippling across the surface and bright fish waltzing through the water. Patting, he invites her to sit on the couch, a lived-in black leather seat, warm and more welcoming than she expects. His elbows are on splayed knees and he’s comfortable in his surroundings. She tries to relax but the blisters are burning and she’s feeling exposed. A blind date with a man who turns out not to be a stranger but about whom she knows very little. She wonders which is more excruciating – the pain in her toes or the need for small talk. He regales her with stories about a group of strange men he knows, his friends. He asks her about her friends and she realises she hasn’t spoken to Ellen for far too long. And just as his voice has started to have that lullaby effect, as she starts to relax, maybe to be able to just enjoy the moment for what it’s supposed to be – an evening out, his shit-eating grin returns and that familiar tingle reverberates up her spine.

“I thought I had you pegged, Scully. Right from the beginning.” She sits up higher as he leans towards her. “I had you figured for a strait-laced, buttoned-up, argumentative know-it-all desperate to climb the FBI ladder just so you could flip the bird at all the boys who hung shit on you at the Academy.”

The tingle thrums. Loud enough that she thinks he might be able to hear it.

“I figured you would stay a case or two then flee back to the bull pen. I could see you writing a column for the UCR in which you drew the readership’s attention to the need to allocate resources to science-based programs in order to solve the unsolvable and the subtext would be all about the spook in the basement.”

“I would never…”

He drapes a hand across her knee, the other braced against the back of the couch, and her words fall away. “But then you dropped your robe in that motel in Bellefleur and I realised I had never got a profile so wrong in my life.”

She feels like one of his fish, sucking in oxygen and swimming in circles. His hand increases pressure and she stares at his fingers. He slides closer. “I’ll never forget it. The moment you proved me wrong, Scully. In a dark motel room in Oregon with rain lashing the windows and lightning striking the sky, you in your ivory underwear and ungroomed hair, undressed, without your faithful science to protect you. You trembling and asking for my help.” His fingers start a beat, a drum, a rhythm that matches her heart.

“And I remember thinking how hard it must have been for you, to come to me and bare yourself, not just your body but your fear. So I tried to do the same.”

His lips are whisper close and she can see the tuck of his chin and the cut of his jaw and the broad triangle of his nose and the drama in his eyes.

“Your sister,” she says. “You told me about Samantha.”

“The equivalent of dropping my robe and standing before you in my underwear.” His head tilts down and she cocks her head up towards him. But instead of kissing her he nods and stands up. “The pizza guy is here. Still keen for hot and spicy, Scully? I ordered extra chilli. I’d like to think you can take the heat.”

She stands up, feels the fresh sting of pain in her toes and tears at her eyes. “I think this was a mistake,” she says.

She’s half-way down the corridor before he catches up with her. “So you’re just going to prove my profile right, after all? You’re quitting.” His tone is not quite as arrogant. There’s a quiet note of surrender.

“I gotta go.” She turns away from him. This has been a mistake. She’s certain. They are not compatible. Opposites may attract but they can also repel.

“You can just walk away?”

“Why do you think Tash chose me as your date in the first place? To smooth over your rashness, to rationalise your impulsiveness, to rein you in.”

“But you saved me, Scully, you’ve saved me from myself. I would have spent another Friday night sitting alone in the dark. Your goddamned strict rationalism and science are going to be the most difficult and frustrating element of our partnership. But you do all those things that Tash suggested. And I appreciate it. You make me a whole person.”

He tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear and she remembers where she is and what she’s wearing and she feels the heat in her toes and the tension in her calves. All the signs that, logically, she should take notice of. But instead, she reaches up and loops her arms around his neck. He looks at her, really looks at her. For a moment, she forgets everything logical and sensible. As his lips open and his face moves towards hers, she tries not to think about Monday in the basement. Their mouths are millimetres apart. She’s going to kiss Fox Mulder. She’s going to kiss her partner. She lets her eyes close.

“Dude, you owe me $12.” The pizza guy holds out his hand.

Mulder mutters an apology and she thinks about Monday in the basement. She walks away with the burn of rationalism spreading through her bloodstream.


	4. Salve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully's POV.

The shoes skitter across the floor, one sliding under the sofa, the other find a resting point against the coffee table leg. She flings her belt and it wraps over the ridiculously pompous lampshade Bill gave her as a housewarming and then slithers down, pulling the frilled monstrosity with it. There’s a satisfying crunch. And it’s not Mulder’s neck. What had he said? Something about busting down her walls. Well, buster, this little firecracker is about ready to explode, walls and all.

Her bed is strewn with rejected clothes. At this moment, she’s not exactly sure why she cared so much. The velvet body still holds the shape of her. She removes her blouse and launches it at the bed, crumpling the body until its flat and two-dimensional. What was she thinking? What was Tash thinking? She’ll have to see Blevins on Monday. She shimmies out of her pants and kicks them off her feet. The blisters sting and she curses.

“Fucking Fox Mulder and his fucking arrogant fucking beautiful fucking face.” 

Pillow scrunched to her chest and face, she lies on her side alternately trying to remember the tingle and forget the burn of the worst. blind. date. ever.

Nightmarish images dance behind her eyes. Mulder brushing away a lock of her hair, dabbing at her cheek with a napkin, dancing with her in black and white, shooting her, kissing her, peeking through the swaddling at a baby. She shoots up, sweat beading between her breasts, hair on end. A baby? The clock says 3.37am. How did it go from the tender hair thing to a baby? And no fucking? Where was the fucking? She scrambles out of the tangled sheets and it isn’t until she’s on her second glass of water that she realises there’s someone knocking at her door.

“Mulder?” She doesn’t know why she’s questioning it. Only that egotistical, self-absorbed bastard would rock up to her place after the evening they’d had and present her with a bunch of flowers.

“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he says, walking past her. She flattens it down and follows him. He’s standing by the lamp that lies lifeless like a corpse on the floor. “Cause of death?” he asks, sinking to an easy squat and holding up the crooked shade.

“Why are you here?” She doesn’t have the wits to indulge is sense of humour.

“I just thought I’d swing by and see whether it’s true that Dana Scully wears only her perfume and the strips of skin of the agents who cross her to bed. But I guess the water cooler gossip is incorrect.”

Looking down, she sees her panties and bra, black, lacy, date-y. She brings the roses in front of her and glares at him. He holds up his arms in surrender.

“I fucked up. I’m sorry, Scully.”

He has the grace to look at the floor. His voice is softer, genuine. She feels her neck and shoulders unknot. The aroma of the flowers wafts under her nose.

“These are certainly not what I was expecting,” she says.

“Fuck.” He stands up and closes the gap between them. She’s acutely aware of her lack of clothes and the way her skin prickles in his presence. Her nipples harden and she presses the flowers closer. The tingle is back. He puts a hand on her cheek and she hears herself swallow. His eyes take on that look he wears when he’s talking with victims, that deep empathy he possesses. His voice is just above a whisper. “You were hoping for the pizza?”

Miss Firecracker spits and sizzles. “Fuck you, Mulder. Why are you like this? What is wrong with you? You come over here in the middle of the night and you can’t even be serious for one minute. I told you this was a mistake. I think you should leave.”

His hands curl over her shoulders. “You think? Or you want?”

There’s a warmth in his palms that resonates through her skin. The rhythm of his massaging takes away some of the burn in her gut. “You need to leave.”

“When I got here, I could hear you. You sounded like you were having a nightmare. Are you okay, Scully?”

She’s standing before him in her underwear. It’s not like he hasn’t seen this before. But it’s not the physical exposure that’s leaving her feeling so vulnerable. It’s being laid emotionally bare. Showing her fear. How does he do this? How does he stretch you to the edge of sanity then snap you back to wanting to fall into his arms?

“I’m fine, Mulder. But you really need to leave. It’s late.”

He checks his watch. “It’s early. Bean is about to open. Wanna share a cream cheese bagel?” He smiles gently.

The tingle resonates through her and she’s awake. “Real cream cheese?”

“Tash knows our orders,” he says, then taps his chest, “by heart.”

Her own heart drums a beat and she turns to the kitchen to find a vase for the roses. She spreads the stems out and puts them on the table. She takes one last long inhale of the floral aroma and looks up at Mulder. “Ready?”

He nods, then holds up her belt and shoes. “You might want to get dressed first though.”

She dies. There and then. Shrivels to dust in her own living room. A meeting with Blevins can’t come soon enough. When she opens her eyes to chance a look at the MulderGrin, he’s already taken off his shirt and he’s unbuckling his belt, unzipping his fly. His pants slip over his hips and he’s standing there in her living room in black silk boxers. That have green alien heads all over them. He’s grinning. In fact, he’s laughing. And that tingle goes into overdrive, thrumming up and down her spine and through her groins.

“If this is what it takes to get you to chill, Scully, then I’m all for it. Even at too early on a Sunday. Come here,” he says and she’s in his arms in a microsecond, face pressed against the hair on his chest with an uncontrollable urge to lick his nipples. He swoops his head down and captures her mouth in his, kissing her urgently before pulling back and exploring her neck, where the noise from his own throat sends shockwaves of want through her. He’s at her collar bones, butterflying kisses along the ridge and she’s dipping her fingers into his boxers and staving off the compulsion to run her tongue along his length, mirroring his own movements.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Never been less sure of anything, Mulder, but you’re impulsiveness is rubbing off on me.”

The thickness of the air tells her it later in the day. She wakes with an arm protectively wrapped around her breasts, and his nose digging into the nexus of her neck and shoulder. He’s warmly heavy, snoring lightly and he smells of her.

“Does this date constitute an X File, Scully?” he says later, sitting at her table, half-hidden behind the roses.”

“Walking into the unknown, danger, pain, opening your mind to the possibilities,” she says. “Stamp it with a red X and file it away.”

He frowns. “You don’t want to follow it up?”

She giggles as she sits down, nursing a black coffee. “You’re serious?”

His fingers touch hers and there’s a spark. “I think we’ve got something. I want to see where it goes. Don’t you?”

Yes, yes she does. “Maybe.”

He stands up, ready to leave. She’s caught between relief and disappointment. “Lunch at Bean tomorrow?”

“Yes, no.” Dammit.

“Scully?”

“I’ve got an appointment. An old friend from the Academy wants to talk about a case he’s working on.”

He opens the door and stands under the frame. “Anyone I know?”

She shakes her head. “Don’t think so. See you later tomorrow?”

He kisses her and she feels the tingle, but it’s cooler. Like a salve. As she watches him saunter away she thinks that Tom Colton’s case better be worth missing lunch with Fox Mulder.


End file.
